Dreamforce 2025 | Carrie McWilliams, Deloitte Consulting LLP

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Carrie McWilliams

Managing Director

Deloitte Consulting LLP

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play_circle_outline Embracing Data-Driven Marketing: Navigating the Evolving Landscape Through Technology and Strategic Insights

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Carrie McWilliams, Deloitte Consulting LLP

Carrie McWilliams

Managing Director Deloitte Consulting LLP

In this Dreamforce 2025 interview, Carrie McWilliams, managing director at Deloitte Consulting LLP, joins theCUBE’s Dave Vellante and George Gilbert to unpack how agentic AI is reshaping modern marketing. McWilliams explains how “digital labor” is compressing cycle times by removing repetitive tasks and handoffs across the end-to-end marketing workflow – freeing strategists to focus on higher-value planning and experimentation. She details how behavioral data, website interactions and customer feedback flow into LLMs to enable real-time decisioning, more prec... Read more

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Dave Vellante

>> Hey, everybody. Welcome back to Dreamforce 2025. We're here at Moscone South, a popular venue for theCUBE. First time theCUBE has been actually inside the venue. We've been at Dreamforce many, many years. My name is Dave Vellante. And my co-host, George Gilbert, and I are taking over for John Furrier and Gemma Allen who are back in New York at our NYSE studio. Carrie McWilliams is here. She's the Managing Director at Deloitte Consulting. And we're excited to have you.

Carrie McWilliams

>> Absolutely. Happy to be here.

Dave Vellante

>> You are a marketing whiz, I'm told, and you're actually at the forefront of understanding how agentic is affecting marketing.

Carrie McWilliams

>> Absolutely.

Dave Vellante

>> I don't have the marketing DNA. I just don't, and my wife does, but it's not in me. So what can you tell us about what's changing with marketing?

Carrie McWilliams

>> I mean, my goodness, it's everything. AI is really changing how marketers are interacting with all aspects of organizations. You really have the opportunity to reimagine how you're engaging with customers. And the marketing organization itself is really starting to transform because of that, because you're starting to incorporate digital labor into that end-to-end workflow across marketing, which is just a fantastic way for us to really reimagine how we can reengage.

Dave Vellante

>> George, everywhere we look, the theme of scaling without labor, and it's all about-

George Gilbert

>> Yeah....

Dave Vellante

>> digital. It's a profound change that I'm not sure... I mean, I think clearly, you understand it in marketing, but it's going to have ripple effects across the industry, isn't it?

Carrie McWilliams

>> It's absolutely beyond. And I think a great opportunity here at Dreamforce. Salesforce shared their agentic enterprise vision. And love the call out that it's beyond marketing because it really is. It's providing that connected experience across sales, service, marketing, commerce, and beyond with a unified profile with Data Cloud.

Dave Vellante

>> So how are you applying this technology? Maybe you could share some examples where your priorities... Actually, step back because you had a million things you could do. How did you prioritize, pare it down? And what did you attack?

Carrie McWilliams

>> Yeah, absolutely. So I think as we've had conversations with brands and with customers, we're really starting to step back, look at the end-to-end marketing workflow, the key personas that exist across the marketing lifecycle, and look at opportunities to reduce any repetitive tasks, reduce handoffs in workflow, and I'll talk a bit more about that-

Dave Vellante

>> Okay....

Carrie McWilliams

>> in a minute, so that we can really increase speed to market for campaigns. And that's really the magic here, is being able to increase efficiency and leverage that digital labor to augment your existing team.

Dave Vellante

>> Is there an analytics angle here that's different than the sort of post-events analytics and

Carrie McWilliams

>> Yeah-...

Dave Vellante

>> more real-timeness built in?

Carrie McWilliams

>> There is. And so with marketing, you have so much data. There's behavioral data, there are the interactions that you have on the website, there's customer feedback. And now with AI, you have the ability to process that data, feed that into an LLM, and use that to change how you're interacting in a real-time fashion as you mentioned.

George Gilbert

>> So picking up on that, a couple of questions. Maybe you can elaborate a little more on the theme of looking at the personas and sort of managing the handoffs or eliminating the handoffs.

Carrie McWilliams

>> Sure.

George Gilbert

>> So this is on the brand side-

Carrie McWilliams

>> Yep....

George Gilbert

>> wow it changes the work. But the key thing was speed for the campaign, but one other thing, which is then a feedback loop, like learning from it. Maybe elaborate on how that works now.

Carrie McWilliams

>> Sure. Absolutely. So I think a good example here might be a campaign strategist or brief manager-

George Gilbert

>> Yeah....

Carrie McWilliams

>> who's doing to be responsible for setting that overall vision and strategy for the company. You can now leverage an agent front end to help with a lot of those planning and analysis tasks-

George Gilbert

>> Yeah....

Carrie McWilliams

>> so that the marketer themselves can focus much more on the strategy. And what they're going to do is they're going to take the outputs from the agent. And instead of having created themselves at the front end, you're interacting with the agent-

George Gilbert

>> Yeah....

Carrie McWilliams

>> to come up with a better output and test and learn through that approach so that you can refine the output and focus then on that faster time to market.

George Gilbert

>> And when you say test, are you talking about doing A/B tests... Oh, okay.

Carrie McWilliams

>> So you're doing A/B tests if you're further along in the life cycle.

George Gilbert

>> Yeah.

Carrie McWilliams

>> If you're front end and we're talking about just campaign brief creation, you might be interacting via the Slack interface that was demoed here at Dreamforce.

George Gilbert

>> So the whole cycle time is compressed.

Carrie McWilliams

>> It compresses significantly.

George Gilbert

>> And what about then in the campaign itself, if you have not just the faster cycle time, but you have greater productivity for the sort of, I guess, campaign manager. Can they do more with the help of analytics and agents, more fine-grained, more personalized sort of campaigns themselves-

Carrie McWilliams

>> Absolutely....

George Gilbert

>> rather than buckets.

Carrie McWilliams

>> Exactly. And that's the magic here is being able to have those more personalized interactions across channels to the right channels at the right time, and leveraging-

George Gilbert

>> And what are those channels?

Carrie McWilliams

>> And that's based on the insights and behaviors.

George Gilbert

>> Yeah.

Carrie McWilliams

>> So you're looking at the customer real-time intent based on if I'm browsing a website, looking at products-

George Gilbert

>> Yeah....

Carrie McWilliams

>> so that I can then surface the right interaction at the right time so I can have better engagement.

Dave Vellante

>> Okay. So you've got Marketing Cloud 2.0. I can't get the-

Carrie McWilliams

>> Next-gen-

Dave Vellante

>> Yeah, next-gen....

Carrie McWilliams

>> marketing.

Dave Vellante

>> Data Cloud is now Data 360, right?

Carrie McWilliams

>> You got it.

Dave Vellante

>> And we talked about analytics. So earlier, you talked about personalization. So how are those pieces coming together to drive personalization?

Carrie McWilliams

>> Absolutely. So you want to think about this almost in layers. So with Marketing Cloud Next or Agentforce Marketing, new name-

Dave Vellante

>> Thank you.

Carrie McWilliams

>> Of course. This is built on top of Data Cloud. So it's native with Data Cloud. And this is really a huge unlock for businesses and brands because you're able to leverage all of the data and insights in Data Cloud with that unified customer profile. And we talked about data just a few moments ago. So you're ingesting all of the data into Data Cloud so that you can have that enriched and unified customer profile to activate on in channels with Marketing Cloud Next.

Dave Vellante

>> Thinking about how Salesforce positions Agentforce, what are you seeing as the drivers of adoption and customers? And what are the big barriers? What has to be-

Carrie McWilliams

>> Sure....

Dave Vellante

>> resolved?

Carrie McWilliams

>> We talked a bit about efficiency gains. So that's a big one. How can I be more efficient with my operations? Another one is, how do I increase engagement and personalization? But we really need to step back and expand beyond just marketing, because we're seeing a lot of initial adoption in sales or service scenarios where I'm able to really test, learn, and have interactions for processing reservation requests or simpler requests that don't need to be handled by a person that are now handled by an agent.

George Gilbert

>> Is your-

Dave Vellante

>> Go ahead, please.

George Gilbert

>> Picking up on that answer, it sounds almost like there's maybe perhaps a blurring of what were functionally separate sales, service, and marketing, and that-

Carrie McWilliams

>> Yeah....

George Gilbert

>> you're thinking of this customer or prospect and the life cycle, and there are different activities that might be appropriate for that individual rather-

Carrie McWilliams

>> ....

George Gilbert

>> than working as historical segments and classes.

Carrie McWilliams

>> Absolutely. It's that one-to-one interaction based on your individual preferences, your behaviors, your intent with how you're engaging with a brand and where you're engaging with the brand so that you're able to have that more meaningful interaction.

George Gilbert

>> Okay. Last question then on-

Carrie McWilliams

>> Of course....

George Gilbert

>> this topic. But it sounds like to do that really effectively, you really need the broader Salesforce footprint. It's much harder if you're trying to piece together some third-party components.

Carrie McWilliams

>> Absolutely. So if you have the Salesforce core platform with sales service and all of that can be unified with Data Cloud, absolutely. That's a very, very powerful interaction for-

George Gilbert

>> Okay....

Carrie McWilliams

>> customers.

Dave Vellante

>> Were you here for the keynote on Tuesday?

Carrie McWilliams

>> I was.

Dave Vellante

>> Okay. So Mark, every person that he held the mic with said, "What's your vision?" So what's your vision for marketing? We've gone from-

George Gilbert

>> Yeah....

Dave Vellante

>> your spec sheets and websites, and now, you're talking about a completely different world. Lay out your vision.

Carrie McWilliams

>> Absolutely. So this is one where it's actually really exciting because we've, for a long time, been talking about the end-to-end lifecycle. And I mentioned moving from weeks and months of working through a campaign process to get that brief or that campaign out the door. That's now being reduced today. That's so exciting. So the vision here is looking at how agentic can support and really catapult organizations to the forefront, leveraging agentic as that additional support for your marketers.

Dave Vellante

>> From a business model standpoint, it's a weird question, does that mean you can raise prices or you can just do more or both?

Carrie McWilliams

>> Should I answer that?

Dave Vellante

>> Yeah. You don't have to answer the first part, but the second part, clearly, you have more capacity.

Carrie McWilliams

>> Sure.

Dave Vellante

>> And we'll see about... The market will determine what-

Carrie McWilliams

>> Of course, yeah....

Dave Vellante

>> the prices are.

Carrie McWilliams

>> You have more capacity with your digital labor workforce that augments your existing workforce. So it's really having organizations step back and understand what makes sense, where you're leveraging these agents across the lifecycle, whether that's content creation. We talked about-

Dave Vellante

>> Yeah....

Carrie McWilliams

>> brief creation or some of those predictive insights that you're able to then use to come up with those better campaigns.

Dave Vellante

>> When you talk to people who don't have the marketing gene like myself, what do you think is most misunderstood about the opportunities that exist in marketing? And maybe think about some of your customers that might be struggling with-

Carrie McWilliams

>> Sure....

Dave Vellante

>> the future.

Carrie McWilliams

>> I think something that is somewhat misunderstood is how important data is to this whole process. And it always comes back to data, always, always, always. So just wanted to reemphasize that because you think about marketing as the touch points and interactions, which it absolutely is. But if you're reaching out with the wrong data, you don't have the right context for the customer, you have outdated data, then the reach out is not going to be effective. You're not going to get the ROI on the campaign or the engagement you're looking for on a website, for example.

Dave Vellante

>> And your Salesforce relationship, what's your vision for that? Where-

Carrie McWilliams

>> Sure....

Dave Vellante

>> do you see it going? Maybe even if I asked you a year from now, what would you like to be able to say with your Salesforce partners that you can't say today?

Carrie McWilliams

>> So we're currently a Salesforce Agentforce launch partner, as well as a launch partner for Data Cloud. I would love to continue. We really value our partnership together. So I'd love to continue the collaboration that we have with Salesforce now on the marketing front to continue to release new and effective agents out in market.

George Gilbert

>> I want to go back to that efficiency and personalization theme, because it sounds like the cycle time can improve dramatically. But I'm also wondering, has measurement effectiveness improved so that you know attribution, like where in the journey and which touch points have contributed how much-

Carrie McWilliams

>> Sure....

George Gilbert

>> to the value of the customer?

Carrie McWilliams

>> Yeah, absolutely. So with the latest reporting and analytics tools and capabilities that exist, even within Marketing Cloud Next, you start to get a different view on what campaigns are most effective, touch points are most effective. And then with some of the key features and capabilities within Marketing Cloud, you can then leverage that to do sent-time optimization and other things so that you can send campaigns out at the right time based on that data.

George Gilbert

>> So it's both the efficiency, the targeting, and the measurement.

Carrie McWilliams

>> Absolutely.

George Gilbert

>> So everything's gotten better.

Carrie McWilliams

>> Yep.

George Gilbert

>> Then I imagine, historically, this has been mostly specialized vendors that have been in competition. But when you emphasize data drives everything, that would seem to favor someone with a broader footprint, an application footprint that then turns into Data Cloud because then the Data Cloud information about the customer is richer.

Carrie McWilliams

>> Yes.

George Gilbert

>> That seems to be like a self-reinforcing cycle where the Salesforce footprint is just going to keep expanding.

Carrie McWilliams

>> Yeah. So if you think about how and where Marketing Cloud Next sits in the overall stack, one, agree with your statement. But two, you need to have both the Data Cloud expertise as well as marketing so that you're able to activate on the data effectively-

George Gilbert

>> Yes....

Carrie McWilliams

>> find those segments, and then use those via Data Cloud. So agree. You're looking for someone that has that hybrid blend of skill set and expertise across both data tech and then marketing.

George Gilbert

>> Thanks.

Dave Vellante

>> So this is obviously a big show for you guys.

Carrie McWilliams

>> Of course.

Dave Vellante

>> What's next for the year?

Carrie McWilliams

>> Oh, what's next? I love the ping on what's next. So we have a number of events coming up. We'll continue Thought Leadership. We just published a Thought Leadership guide out, which is active now on Marketing Cloud Next best practices and adoption approaches. So that's very top of-

Dave Vellante

>> On your website?

Carrie McWilliams

>> On our website, of course. So you can find it there.

Dave Vellante

>> Okay.

Carrie McWilliams

>> And we'll continue to host a number of webinars on some of the key points of view within that.

Dave Vellante

>> And who attends those webinars?

Carrie McWilliams

>> It's open.

Dave Vellante

>> CMOs?

Carrie McWilliams

>> Yeah. It's-

Dave Vellante

>> What's the typical-...

Carrie McWilliams

>> directors, CMOs. It's anyone that's interested in marketing. So it is an open invitation for those type of webinars-

Dave Vellante

>> Absolutely....

Carrie McWilliams

>> so that we can, one, educate people on the power of what's available now because it's truly exciting and we're changing how marketing organizations are functioning, and then, two, sharing a bit on our accelerators so that we can help.

Dave Vellante

>> Sounds like a great freebie for people who want to learn.

Carrie McWilliams

>> Absolutely.

Dave Vellante

>> Carrie, thanks so much for coming on theCUBE.

George Gilbert

>> Thanks-

Dave Vellante

>> It's great to have you.

Carrie McWilliams

>> Of course. Thank you so much.

Dave Vellante

>> All right. Thank you for watching. This is Dave Vellante for George Gilbert at Dreamforce 2025. You're watching theCUBE. We'll be right back right after this short break from San Francisco.